Documentation on the API

There are two aspects of the WebMEV backend.

First, we have the public-facing RESTful API endpoints which are used to drive an analysis, upload files, and perform other actions. Documentation of the API is provided by auto-generated documentation conforming to the OpenAPI spec here: API documentation.

The second aspect of WebMEV is the data structures, models, and concepts that we use to architect the system. You will find information about these entities and their relationships in this section. Understanding these data structures and associated nomenclature will be important when describing how to work with WebMEV and create new workflows.

Core concepts

The goal of WebMEV is to provide a suite of analysis tools and visualizations to guide users through self-directed analyses, most commonly with genomic (particularly transcriptomic) data.

At a high level, users will start from either files that they provide (e.g. a previously generated expression matrix) or (if available) can import data from public repositories that are available through WebMEV. Users will then create one or more Workspaces which facilitates logical organization of analyses and separation of distinct projects or experiments. Within the context of the Workspace, users can perform a custom analysis as a series of atomic steps which we call Operations.

More specific details about each of these steps, including how we handle metadata are available in the other sections of this documentation.